551st Review: Again a Great Director Turns to Shouting And Boasting - A Dreadful Waste

Rating: 3/10 (3 October 2013)

Pacific Rim is noise, color, and clash - but while the CGI takes over at every point, the movie truly fails to be anything other than PowerRangers on steroids, or Transformers in a better class - and if that's your cup of tea then no bad or balanced review is going to put you off and you'll love it.
Honestly, the actors are the best robots here - the lines are flat and mostly delivered in a Marine sergeant style monotone shout that seems to be becoming the hallmark of US action films. Guillermo del Toro is a marvellous director but here he has been tempted to let his imagination be kowtowed to convention - and really this is a 1980s film with 2010s special effects.
Who buys that we will all have advanced so much in 5 years? That aside, Pacific Rim is simply frustrating - a cacophony of loud noise, big fights, pseudo-emotional scenes that leave us hoping the monsters win if it puts out of our misery.
I cannot deny that the effects are stunning, nor that the overall effect left me stunned and not in a good way - this is not entertainment, it is boasting - and Del Toro was never Michael Bay - but here the boasting leaves no room for film.
A huge shame.